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Bill Gates Just Bought 25,000 Acres in the Arizona Desert (kgw.com)
What's the world's second-richest man up to now? A Phoenix news station reports:
One of Bill Gates' investment firms has spent $80 million to kickstart the development of a brand-new community in Arizona's far West Valley. The large plot of land is about 45 minutes west of downtown Phoenix off I-10 near Tonopah. The proposed community, made up of close to 25,000 acres of land, is called Belmont. According to Belmont Partners, a real estate investment group based in Arizona, the goal is to turn the land into its own "smart city."
"Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs," Belmont Partners said in a news release.
A former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper writes that "Unless Gates plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn't tell him..." First, Arizona doesn't have enough water to continue these kind of developments, no matter what the mouthpieces of the Real Estate Industrial Complex say... Second, climate change poses a clear and present danger to Arizona now. Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago. Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question. Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines. All of which make it questionable whether all the dreamed developments ever get built, much less last long.
"To be fair, wealthy people who were clever in one area -- especially tech -- often think they know a lot about everything," the columnist concludes. "If this is the case here, he might want to study up."
"Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs," Belmont Partners said in a news release.
A former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper writes that "Unless Gates plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn't tell him..." First, Arizona doesn't have enough water to continue these kind of developments, no matter what the mouthpieces of the Real Estate Industrial Complex say... Second, climate change poses a clear and present danger to Arizona now. Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago. Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question. Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines. All of which make it questionable whether all the dreamed developments ever get built, much less last long.
"To be fair, wealthy people who were clever in one area -- especially tech -- often think they know a lot about everything," the columnist concludes. "If this is the case here, he might want to study up."
I grew up in Arizona, and let me tell you, a couple decades ago it was HOT. Like, 122 F in Tucson and Phoenix was not unheard of. Now, it's fairly likely to hit that every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti
Since the 1950s, people have thought that the cheap land could be tamed and "new ideas" would just blossom out of the goodness in people's hearts. Arcosanti is a great example, but not the only one. Last I saw the place, it had a gift shop where the hippy owners took money selling semi-erotic paintings and charcoal drawings, and invited the young folks to spend some quality time mixing concrete with desert sand... or pose for the artist. There's never going to be an Arcosanti the way it was originally envisioned, or even with a population over 10.
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The naysayment regarding water is dumb. If you have cheap energy, you can either condense water from the air, even at relatively low humidity levels, or you can desalinate seawater. And Arizona DOES have cheap energy, because "solar panels in a desert".
So this city may be a stupid idea for other reasons, but not because of water shortages.
According to Belmont Partners, a real estate investment group based in Arizona, the goal is to turn the land into its own "smart city."
I'm really interested in how they plan to deal with the water issue, it seems like a show-stopper. Maybe they can build something to recover water from the dry arid air - because otherwise they're going to have to pipe it in, and the Colorado River is already over used... They must have considered this issue when they bought the dry desert land...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You know who was never clever in any area but still thinks he knows a lot about everything? Reporters.
"Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines."
Those really aren't the issues if photovoltaic cells get as good as they are on course to. Will they even bother to go on the grid for electricity? The real issue is water.
They bought the land to develop because a big freeway is supposed to go right through the middle. They'll extort the state for a ton of money, make a huge amount of profit and then exit before the community is fully done. So the long term viability of the site is irrelevant.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Bill must think of the desert as an empty sandbox for him to play in, but there is a vibrant community already there in the plants and animals that have evolved to survive in the climate and terrain . Use the google, there's a website about it: https://www.desertusa.com/. What knowledge will be lost about the Anasazi and Sinagua people? I've walked on pre-Columbian trails where people migrated from the hot Colorado desert to the cool Laguna and Palomar mountains as the seasons changed.
Maybe he's looking for a site to build one of his new reactor gadgets?
http://terrapower.com/updates
"To be fair, wealthy people who were clever in one area -- especially tech -- often think they know a lot about everything,"
Unlike say columnists?
C'mon, I'm sure Bill didn't just smoke a blunt and decide to go build a new city in the desert. You can bet there's a ton of experts involved who have already thought about whatever it is Mr Columnist or Mr Forum poster thinks and then some. Because that's the thing with smart people, they think about all the things you think about, plus some more.
Why did we need this ignorant opinion in the summary? It only serves to dumb down the real story which could be something really interesting.
Given the amount of electronic equipment they are going to install, I would check first issues about lighting protection, soil conductivity, etc.
From some statistics, although Arizona isn't exactly in the "hottest" place for lightings, in Summers it seems they get a lot of thunderstorms as well. Raising constructions over a flat land could easily change statistics, however.
To be fair - technologists nearly always know a hell of a lot more about whatever the columnist is pretending to be knowledgeable about.
I know what Bill Gates is planning to do - he's going to build a pyramid for himself.
Sure, the other guy is richer, but does he have a pyramid? Didn't think so.
Wonder if this is an escape hideout for when the shit hits the fan?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Concentrated solar with molten salt storage, plus electric vehicles, could easily produce energy independence for Belmont. Water could be a problem, but if cables are run, they could use some of that electricity to power a desalination plant on the west coast (and pump the water back via pipeline). Given that high-speed internet is a major part of the city, that suggests fiber. Electric lines could be buried underground along with the fiber. Bonus points if there's a hyperloop between Belmont and the Bay Area. The only reasons I can think of this being done in Arizona rather than, say, Nebraska, are proximity to Silicon Valley, and effective solar power.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
If the heat doesn't melt everything, the Indian burial ghosts will clean house.
I'll agree. So many other planned communities failed based on far smaller problems.
That's one thing that bothered me about some of these planned projects for a new floating nation-state, or some other plan to create some kind of new community, they never considered the basic problem of having an economy. People will need jobs, they need food, and the two kind of go hand in hand.
Reading the article it sounds like they've figured out a lot of such things. Creating a government will be a problem, especially when the vision for the city is in one person's mind. His vision might quickly come into conflict with how others think things should be run.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"Well...there was a girl...and a lighthouse..."
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
There was an excellent article in National Geographic called, "The Drying of the West". In it, the author conducted a ring study of the Bristlecone Pines in southern California. These are some of the oldest trees in the world. What was discovered was that the 20th century was the wettest in the last 2000 years. The author(s) argue that conditions in the western United States are returning back to more normal levels of dryness and this could very well be a very very long trend. GOOD LUCK Billy, I know 80 million is peanuts to you, butt I suggest you should look long and hard at "exactly where" your filthy money comes from...
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Maybe he read Paolo Bacigalupi's novel
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
If you can just get the water from the pacific ocean to the desert then there should be half a dozen ways to turn it into fresh water with all that dry sun during the day and cold at night. Just having a large enough lake and the ground should filter the salt and replenish some small portion of the ground water that is being sucked dry. Arizona and New Mexico and eastern California could become exporters of clean water. They could also build massive molten salt plants and instead of generating electricity simply dump the heat into the salt water and collect the steam.
"First, Arizona doesn't have enough water to continue these kind of developments,"
Just if for some reason you want to have lawns around each house, that ship has sailed, not only in Arizona.
"Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago."
Great! The solar roofs on every house and garage will like that. That's one of the reasons they chose Arizona.
"Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. "
That's why they chose the desert, with no trees, no fires.
"Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning "
Yes, great for solar and no heating in winter, what's not to like?
"and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines."
Gasoline? This is new 21th century, nobody needs gasoline anymore. These people will drive Teslas, not F150s.
Look, Bill Gates can get a lot of things wrong, that much anyone can tell.
But quite frankly the smugness of the columnist is quite hillarious, on how stupid someone can be.
As if he's more equipped to know how Bill's investment will pan out from a very superficial reading, like in comparison to a guy who made his top 3 world fortune position out of a garage upstart and is currently driving one of the most effective and important foundations in the world. Smugness tied to ignorance, good way to show the entire world how much of an idiot you are.
With the sort or money and power Gates has, he can turn any desolate land into paradise. He could build a tropical paradise out of Antarctica. It's the sort of backing that made places like Las Vegas and Disney.
Climate change, massive wildfires, hotter summer? Does this guy even know who he's talking about? There's a whole range of ways to make the region profitable.
And even if he doesn't, people have to understand that the stuff Bill Gates invest on these days are not always running around profit.
You can hate his Microsoft years and whatnot all you want, and you can throw arguments about tax deductions and whatnot against his foundation all you want, the fact is that there's probably no one else in the world right now investing more on charitable causes. We're talking billions of dollars often on causes that will have no financial return.
People often don't realize how much he and his foundation did because most of the stuff it's currently investing on are ways to address basic health, hygiene and sanitation problems in the poorest countries, so we don't directly see results as much, but for certain regions in the world his contributions probably advanced things several decades in years time.
He's not the kinda guy who is gonna be worried about infrastructure problems in an arid region. He's the guy who has the best chances of finding out a way of solving such problems there, and then selling or sharing the knowledge to do the same to other parts of the world.
For all of the people seeing the reasons for this to fail, there are other possible motivations that may be at play. First, he may actually put up a dome over the whole place, and there may be some ways to pull in whatever moisture there is in the air at night, though I don't know if it would be nearly enough. The dome solution would help with both the heat and the pure dehydration effects caused by the heat, and might also apply to those who want to see people living on Mars.
This is all speculation, but too many people think in terms of your typical developers who expect people to just build houses and wonder why it doesn't work. Those with the resources, as well as some vision for the future, may look for ways to deal with climate change, and what better way to experiment than by going into an extreme climate and trying to make things work THERE?
Then again, experimenting with things like climate change, pump in tons of water from the pacific ocean in a pipeline the way oil is pumped in, and see what happens if you desalinate that water and use it to grow plants and actually try to convert the desert. It may take decades, but that is to be expected if that is attempted.
Supossedly, he has so much money, he can't give it away fast enough... how bout, bill, ya give some to do some good here in the ole usa!
Look at the air conditioning requirements of Biosphere II. They were _massive_.
Reminds of Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. Now, if Gates plays the role of Martin Chuzzlewit or of Scadder, that is something for you to decide.
Learning to live in new environs is what resourceful life does when it refuses to die and depopulate at the edge of the Petri dish.
If we cannot figure out how to live (and eventually thrive) in the earthly atmosphere of the Arizona desert with its excessive heat and limited water, off-planet settlements are the dreams that come from pipes.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This settlement is 45 minutes outside of Phoenix, a city of population 1.6 million. And growing. Rapidly. All the critics here who are chorussing "oh, Gates is so stupid, he doesn't know that Arizona is uninhabitable" are silly: we already know it's possible because 1.6 million people already live there.
He merely needs to make a suburb that's somewhat more attractive than the other suburbs currently being built. And he can sell this to, not new people who had never thought of moving to Arizona, but some of the 81,000 people moving to the Phoenix area every year.
A "smart" city would be one that's not built in a freakin' desert .
#DeleteFacebook
I found...
There's no shade.
There's no water (except at the golf courses)
All the plants have thorns
All the insects are venomous
All the animals are venomous
It's too hot to be outside for about 9 months of the year.
Everything about the place screams "humans do not belong here!", yet most of the population lives in the Valley of the Sun.
I guess that explains the voting record...
It was also an air tight greenhouse. It deliberately captured large quantities of sunlight. Proper desert buildings use shade and air flow to keep cool.
Have gnu, will travel.
Wouldn't it be better for an array of solar steam generators or solar panels? At least if you are going to gobble up a huge chunk of one of the few the last places of open land we have., do something USEFUL with it!! Lower the amount of Carbon we put into the atmosphere. (Brainless people with money are dangerous!)
it's mostly the rich here that get those watered lawns. Even in the middle class neighborhoods you're only going to see small patches (and even then during winter). And, well, the rich aren't going to give up their lawns because they don't have to. The cost of water will just go up for the working class and poor.
And yeah, nobody thinks much of Phoenix when it comes to wealth, but it's full of multi millionaires and even billionaires. When you get old the dry air is good for you so lots of folks come here if they can afford it.
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There's just nothing for miles around there. Nobody employed will want to live there because the commute will be insane. We've already got at least two such failed experiment communities outside of and both already much closer to Phoenix (called Verrado and Anthem) I guess Gates doesn't do his homework.
The last thing AZ needs is yet another half-occupied community full of seniors and snowbirds.
There's a really easy way to deal with it: Gentrification. Which is a really fancy way of saying screw to poor and lower working class. Water resources will be diverted to the well to do and a select few who serve them and the rest of us will be left to fight for the scraps. In all the discussions about how to solve the water problem I've not heard this one mentioned once, and it's by far the most likely...
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We've seen how this plays out before. Except we don't have Superman to go back in time to fix it....
Watch his hair - if it turns out to be a toupee, we're doomed.
The article seems to speculate that Gates was ignorant when he bought the land. I would suggest that given his wealth and power he knows a few things that some of us peons don't. According to some, Arizona in 20-30 years will be too hot to inhabit and instead we'll be settling Mars. Sounds like science fiction to me. Of course many like that sort of entertainment.
Complete fact-free crap.
... why is it going to be located in a place with virtually no water?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Obviously. Also, ironically, there's a place near Scottsdale called Westworld.
If his other charitable endeavors are an indication, he may be conducting an experiment on how to make desert hospitable using technology. It might or might not work. He has the money to conduct such an experiment and learn from it. Much of the world does not have the option to move to a better place. If he can crack this problem and share the results with the world, he can potentially help many.
On the wisdom of the Gates Purchase: Richard Feynman put it fairly well:
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."
And Again:
"In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself."
But heck, it's ONLY $80 million. Not like he'll miss it. But it doesn't show much thought for those who really need a dig out. :
Let's for the moment assume that me and the reporter are equally qualified to talk shit about science we both obviously don't understand. Then I'll chime in on what I can get from using common sense and maybe a little multidimensional thinking.
... from sand (if there is any sand for clear glass there) which will cause water to evaporate and then be caught on the top of the box and drip off the sides to be collected. The salt can be dumped into the desert as one option, it can also be gathered through maintenance (probably using low cost labor or robots). If using solar electricity, also keep in mind that it doesn't need to work 24/7. Instead of storing electricity, it can simple overproduce during the day and be stored as fresh water to be filtered for drinking after.
Solar and Wind - These two tools are really useful for solving power issues. They're not end-all solutions and large batteries in the desert will get hot and cooling them to a reliable operational level that don't leak constantly will require large air-conditioned facilities or at least massive underground storage. On the other hand, using it should be possible using Elon Musk's tech to build most internal walls of each climate controlled home and office to collect and store quite a bit of power without the need for large centralized facilities. A reliable automated method of washing roof tiles will be needed, but I imagine that sprinkler systems mounted on the roof should assist with this.
Niagra falls and the NYC aqueduct. This was accomplished originally in 1907 with technology from 1907... as a government project it was expanded substantially in 2015 and that was one of the biggest examples of government corruption in NY history... the land of the mafias... Those aqueducts have supplied tens of millions of people with water across a 262km stretch for over a hundred years. The issue is to bring water...not necessarily fresh, but simply water to the desert. It should be possible for Bill Gates to buy a "Boring Company" drill and get zoning to drill from the Gulf of California to his plot. Alternatively, he can lay an above ground pipe which might be more profitable. The reason is that using vacuum a heated pipe will start sucking water uphill without the assistance of pumps if the pipe is correctly designed. In addition, pumps will further assist. This can allow a large salt water reservoir to be established near/on his plot. Then the problem is desalination.
Desalination - The only real problem with desalination is the energy cost and salt disposal... which in a desert isn't overly problematic. One method is either to use solar electricity. An alternative is to build glass boxes
There is also ground water. Ground water is quite plentiful but difficult to access in the desert. Of course, this option debatable as there are many ground water problems in the desert. The most obvious is that as the water level decreased, the desert sinks too. This can be a nightmare for construction and infrastructure.
There are also many methods for extraction of water from the air. This is becoming more and more common in African deserts. Of course, the yield is low (at least on an urban scale) and dries out the environment further.
Purification generally requires power and filters. The most obvious filter which solves an economical problem as well is coal. I am no expert on chemistry and don't understand the process of producing the specific types of coal required for water purification, but I would imagine that this would increase demand for non-energy related coal.
Wildfires are always a problem in hot climates. So the solution for this is increase water, that means pumping more sea water in. The desert is a nightmare to make lakes in, but it's possible to do. On method is major concrete basins. Other methods could be to scorch the earth further to bring the sand closer to glass. I'm sure there are people far smarter than me who can come up with methods of building massive pools for salt and clean water
The electric and gasoline issue is solvable by having zero in city gas stations but plenty of electric vehicle chargers. Then install a very large solar power plant. Augment with some wind power. And talk to Tesla about a city sized battery bank. The Gigafactory is close by so shipping cost won't be painful. And just install high efficiency heat pumps. Capture the November to April cold from the nights in heat banks to offset the May to October high temps. Store some of the Summer heat to offset Winter nights. And get water from Lake Mead, but also recycle it. Make it so all point of use is separated to gray water and black water sewerage. The gray water is easier to recycle. The black water a little harder. And no outdoor non-native plants! Use porous surfaces for the sidewalks and roads (requires a separate freight to shops delivery system) and help out a bit. Capture the water and use it for the sewerage treatment system. Augment the city electric provisions with capture at point of use in the residential areas. An earth banked home will remain cooler; there are a lot of designs that would capture that 20-25 degree cooler region. Envelope designs are also pretty good in hot climates to mitigate high daytime temperatures.
This is a project I have worked over multiple times on "paper" over the years. I'd love to have Bill Gates contact me to work on this project. It is easily possible he believes global warming will present a difficult time for humans and he's researching a city in a climate that is already hot.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
The negative comments seem to completely ignore the fact that in MOST new communities, the resource limitations are a "make or break" situation because the inhabitants can't afford to pay taxes high enough to cover the costs involved in overcoming them.
(Heck, where I live - we're a town of about 6,000 people, right along the Potomac River. And a big reason some people who come here don't stay long is the high water and sewer bills. Treating the river water is quite expensive.)
If the second richest man in the world is the guy who wants to experiment with making a city work in the desert, I think he could do it. But it depends on how bad he WANTS this to work. Desalination plants could provide ocean water pumped in and processed using solar energy arrays. That's the kind of infrastructure that would get the job done, but at a really big up-front cost if you want it to be viable for residents after it's in place.
Enforce draconian laws regarding land use, water use, building materials, power use and so on.
It'll be like a HOA from hell, with computers.
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First of all, it isn't "Arizona's" west valley. It is the west valley of Phoenix, a city in the state of Arizona.
Secondly, in Tonopah there are massive aquifers (underground rivers essentially) and the water is very close to the surface. Makes it easier and cheaper to drill wells.
"Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question" - I think he meant habitable. In any case, lots of people are moving there. Minnesota in January - that's inhabitable.
"Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines." - That may be true now but Arizona is perfectly set up for solar and wind. The kind of city that Gates envisions is achievable.
Phoenix is expanding in basically two directions. Due west, towards Los Angeles. And north west towards Las Vegas. The east valley (Scottsdale, Chandler, Tempe) are basically built out. There is very little land left and what is left is very expensive. To the south, South Mountain effectively cuts off everything south of it from Phoenix making travel into Phoenix difficult. To the north you have the densely packed suburb of Anthem. Beyond that the only freeway (the I-17) goes down to two lanes. And there are Indian reservations hemming in the east valley. In fact, many of the big office towers in Scottsdale are built on land leased from Indian tribes. And they are never selling that land.
People in Scottsdale have traditionally looked down their noses at the west valley of Phoenix. But those are the only large parcels of land left. Jerry Colangelo, who used to own the Phoenix Suns basketball team, made a shit-load of money developing land in the west valley. As did a guy named John F. Long, whose family donated the land that the Arizona Cardinals stadium sits on today. They were buying up land at $5-10 dollars an acre. Today an acre of raw land - no house, no utilities, no water - will set you back about $100,000.
Gates knows exactly what he is doing.
Bill's a bit old to be starting up a hippy commune.
Not a real good place to grow dope,
but a good place for a dope.
Go well
As engineering projects go, smart cities are far more interesting challenges if you choose hostile terrain for your project. Also, it's a great way to catalyze technologies that might eventually help us:
That said, I'm no Pollyanna. I would absolutely love to see a bold commitment from the project leads that they won't put new, additional strain on the water resources in Arizona.
Also, to be fair, the columnist calling one of the richest men in the world an idiot for buying land in arizona probably barely clears rent each month. So I'm sure he knows best.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
The first settlements off planet will be in asteroids or habitats. Many will be employees of the Green Mars effort. By the time Mars can support 1000 people, there will be millions already living in space and many of them will be in orbit around Mars.
The resources needed to green Mars will be mined from asteroids and other sources. At some point humans will realize that we don't need no stinking gravity well, at least one as inhospitable as Mars and better planets will be sought. Except for a few sites, Mars will be left uninhabited.
Bit obvious i'd have thought - way to get back to being the richest man on the planet. Get 25K acres in the desert and - METH LAB!!